Greg Bunce: Welcome to another episode of the Utah Geospatial Podcast. This is Greg Bunce.
Matt Peters: And I’m Matt Peters.
Greg Bunce: And we’re from the Utah Geospatial Resource Center. This podcast will be bringing you Geospatial news from across Utah.
911 has been a long time driver for GIS in many states in the US, including Utah. Over the years, we’ve seen GIS play a role in E911 systems, and now an even larger role in Next Generation 911. One of the most beneficial aspects of Next Generation 911 is that GIS and geospatial data are front and center. You could say that geospatial data is the backbone to the system.
Here in Utah, we’ve been on a long journey transitioning to Next Gen 911 and we’re finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. Getting us to where we are today has required close working relationships with local GIS data stewards, such as the counties, and Public Safety Answering Points, which are the PSAPs, and the Utah Communications Authority, which is the state agency tasked with matters relating to 911.
Today on the show we chat with Tina Mathieu, who is the Executive Director for the Weber Area Dispatch 911 Center, which is the PSAP for the Weber Morgan area. You’ll hear how working relationships and collaboration are key when deploying a statewide system such as 911. Collectively our goal is to work together to provide the best possible emergency services for the residents of Utah. So let’s dive right in.
Matt Peters: Yeah, well, let me maybe give you a little intro of my own. 911 is something that I’ve been involved with from a long time ago. I didn’t really realize what it was beyond the phone call. I didn’t understand all the background. And so today, we’re lucky enough to have Tina Mathieu with us from the Weber Area Dispatch Center. And so I think Tina, just as a start, you know, I noticed your name in a lot of old documents from years gone by and you’ve been involved in this for a long time. What tell us a little bit about yourself?
Tina Mathieu: Yeah, I’ve been in the business for 30 years. I started at Valley Emergency Communications Center and then left there and went to Layton City in 1999. And then I came to Weber in 2009. So I’ve been pretty fortunate to work at three really great places and with lots and lots of really great dispatchers.
Matt Peters: Yeah. What what ever got you interested in 911?
Tina Mathieu: Um, I think, you know, growing up my dad was a firefighter and my my maternal grandpa was a firefighter and all of my mom’s brothers were firefighters. And we were growing up, if there was a huge fire in Salt Lake, my mom’s aunt would call her because she always would sit home and listen to the scanner. And my mom’s aunt would call her and tell her, “There’s a huge fire.” And my mom would say, “Who wants to go?” And I would always go with her. She’d wake me up in the middle of the night. There were plenty of times, fires I went and sat and watched with my mom in my pajamas, you know, in the middle of the night. So I think it probably ended up being a natural direction for me to go, even though that wasn’t my plan. You know, I think really I was going to school, I wanted to be a news anchor. But I got into 911 before I finished with that and fell in love. So here I am 30 years later.
Matt Peters: That’s quite the story that your mom dragged you out in the middle of the night.
Tina Mathieu: Yeah.
Greg Bunce: That is a good story.
Matt Peters: Yeah.
Matt Peters: Well, I think Greg is gonna give you the big quiz and ask you all the technical stuff. So Greg, take it away.
Greg Bunce: Well, we won’t go too technical. But you know what? I am curious just to go back a little bit and rewind. So you’re at you’re at the Weber Dispatch Center. Is that right? Did I say that right?
Tina Mathieu: Weber Area Dispatch 911 and Emergency Services District is our legal name.
Greg Bunce: Gotcha. And that’s an official PSAP in Utah, one of the 31 PSAPs in Utah, right?
Tina Mathieu: Uh-huh. That’s right.
Greg Bunce: And it seems like just kind of looking over some of the UCA’s documentation, you guys are like the second… you guys handle the second largest call volume in the state from from where you previously came with Valley Emergency. That seems what like I’m seeing.
Tina Mathieu: We are actually the third largest. So Salt Lake City is the second largest. And VECC is the biggest. You’re right.
Greg Bunce: Yeah. Okay, interesting. So then so what is your role up there in in the Weber PSAP?
Tina Mathieu: I am the Executive Director. And that is Lucy in the background protecting my office for me.
Greg Bunce: That is great. Yeah, what does Lucy do there? Is Lucy involved in any of the going out into into the field or no?
Tina Mathieu: She… we have Lucy and Lady that came to live with us in Dispatch. They live here 24/7/365. And they’re not trained therapy dogs, but they are… my dispatchers love them. And they could not be more spoiled. So.
Greg Bunce: That’s great. They’re just they’re just living the life.
Tina Mathieu: They are living the life. They have toys and beds and blankets in every office and all over on the dispatch floor. When you go up there anymore, it looks like toddlers live there because there’s toys everywhere and they’re spoiled. But we we rescued them from the shelter and they bring a lot of love and comfort to the dispatchers, especially after, you know, a sad or or hard call. They definitely are loved on by the dispatchers. So.
Greg Bunce: Yeah, that’s a good point actually. Then I was I was kind of going to go into… so essentially, you know, as you’ve said, you’ve been in the field for 30 years and have seen how we’ve migrated in in 911. For me, I kind of came in here where we’re at E911, which is the Enhanced 911. And and as a as our office, we kind of support 911 systems and the E911 system. I know we’re always seeing the the MSAG, the Master Street Address Guide, and the Selective Routers on the on the towers and stuff like that. So this is… so that’s kind of in our world of these tabular… trying to take our GIS data and kind of move it into these tabular data sets that work with the E911. But then, you know, Next Gen comes along. And that’s really the Next Generation of 911. How is how do you see that as different from the E911? How how will that affect you differently at the PSAP level from your perspective?
Tina Mathieu: In general sense, it will really improve how we can manage our call overload and really how we receive our calls because we will eventually be able to, you know, utilize the geospatial routing where the call… the the cellular calls are routed from the caller’s location rather than the cell tower, which is what happens now. And we will also eventually be able to get photos and video over the text element. We can all do the text to 911, but in, you know, as things continue to progress and the telcos really start to progress more, we in 911 will be able to have a citizen, you know, if they witness a robbery or something and take a cell phone video, they’d be able to text us that video in 911. We could put it out to the police officers that are responding right away and show them who their suspects are. So it will be great for the citizens and it will be great for the first responders.
Greg Bunce: Right. And that’s kind of based because it because really in Next Gen 911 it’s the the IP backbone or the IP network, right? And that that’s going to allow the the cell phone, you know, the videos and all that stuff over the over the line.
Tina Mathieu: Right. Over the ESInet. Yeah. It’s digital instead of an analog system, which is what we’ve had, you know, since we were created in 1968.
Greg Bunce: Right. So so right. So when we talk about the cell phone towers again, I would assume most most 911 calls it seems like looking at the the stats here in Utah, and probably anywhere in the US, is that they’re primarily probably coming in from cell phones. So that means a cell tower has to essentially transfer or handle that call. But what you were alluding to is essentially what the GIS data then will… So basically when a when a call hits that tower in a Next Gen world, the the PSAP boundaries or the Public Service Answering Point boundaries will be will come into play, correct? So the tower will say, “Oh, the call came from over here and that is in this answering point, so therefore send the call there based on this polygon.” Is that right?
Tina Mathieu: That’s exactly right. Which will be great because, you know, if you call 911 on a border of a city or a PSAP boundary, then, you know, there’s going to be misroutes just because of which side of the tower you’re on when you call. So it will it’s going to be great because, you know, people get frustrated with us because, you know, we’ll ask them their address and they’ll tell us, “You know where, you know, you know where I’m at. Uber knows where I’m at. How do you not know where we’re at?” And it’s all because of the telcos provide that information to Uber and Dominos and places like that, but they don’t to us even though the FCC has set a deadline, although they’ve pushed their deadline many times. So we’re hoping… we’ve been contacted by a couple of the service providers letting us know that they’re getting ready to start doing that. Um, so we hope as a state we’ll be able to start transitioning over to that geospatial routing with some of the service providers once we complete our transition onto the new ESInet that UCA is in the ball with right now.
Greg Bunce: Okay. Have you heard any kind of ballpark dates as to when you’ll be using, you know, these more GIS type data to route that call?
Tina Mathieu: No, it’s really hard to say. One of the companies, you know, came out and said that they were ready to do it in in March or April. But we… UCA needs for the the rest of the service providers that they’re in the process of transitioning to the new Motorola ESInet… they need the rest of the service providers to start routing our 911 calls through the Motorola ESInet. Once that happens, then I think there could be some discussions. But it will be interesting to see. Because once we heard from one of the OSPs, I reached out to a couple of the others and said, “Hey, look, these guys said they’re here. When are you guys going to start to be able to do this?” Because it would be really helpful so that we didn’t have so many misroutes on the borders. That’s really frustrating to a caller to, you know, have their call answered and then be in the middle of a crisis and their worst day and say, “Hang on, let me transfer you to the right 911 center.” So we’re looking forward to it for sure.
Greg Bunce: Right. So again that’s again because the because the cell tower is just broadly broadly sending calls versus, you know, in the Next Gen world the actual specific boundary will be able to determine where to send the call. So that that’s kind of the critical piece right there that again as GIS providers, as we are at UGRC, this is kind of where we come into play and and why the GIS element, I guess, is so important because literally it has that real granular level of saying like, “No, the call goes over here, not over there.” Yeah.
Tina Mathieu: Yeah. Weber’s had a contract with UGRC for for many, many years and and it’s been amazing. Every time I talk to a 911 center that, you know, has a local person or someone, you know, within their office handling their their mapping, I say, “Why wouldn’t you just do a contract with UGRC? They’re You guys are doing amazing job.” And it is critical because everything is on the location, right? That’s the first question we always ask every caller is what is the location of the emergency? If we don’t have a location, we can’t do anything for them. Doesn’t matter if we have their number, their name, doesn’t matter if we have every detail of what’s going on. So to have the the GIS data up to date and um, you know, with all the new the buildings that are going in and, you know, all the housing and everything else. If that’s not up to date, then, you know, we could have real problems. We have calls from um construction areas where people fall off a building and things like that. If we don’t have it on our map, it’s going to be hard for us to map it and be able to find out, you know, determine where they’re at if they’re not able to tell us. Because it’s surprising, but, you know, there’s people who have no idea where they are at when they call 911.
Greg Bunce: Yeah, that makes sense. We’ve seen that in the news occasionally here and there, some of those stories where it goes wrong. Yeah, I guess it’s worth mentioning really quick before I turn the mic over to uh Matt, that UGRC does provide I believe maybe something around 11 of the PSAPs in the state, UGRC provides the data, the the GIS data for. And and of course Weber is one of those.
Matt Peters: Yeah. I noticed your name in a lot of old documents from years gone by and you’ve been involved in this for a long time. Do you guys ever take all the the data of all the calls coming in and do some analysis with that data or or look at that data over time?
Tina Mathieu: In terms of um how the cell towers are routing the callers to us or which data?
Matt Peters: I think that yes, how the the calls are being routed or and and what towers they’re hitting. Just looking to see if there’s any is there any information on on patterns of calls or things that help you to make better decisions?
Tina Mathieu: Um, well in terms of we do a ton of stats. Every day I get um reports emailed to me for the prior day um that show me how quickly we’re answering our calls, how many calls we’ve had, and um, you know, I know that at the end of the year, you know, and actually in statute we have a lot of standards that we have to meet, and national standards too, but they’ve matched our state standards. But I also run stats to just see how many calls. Like for instance, you know, when cell phones first came out, obviously, you know, 100% of our calls were landline. But then as technology changes and you get Voice over IP and cell phones and things like that, um last year we had um only 1.15% of our call volume, our 911 call volume, even came in on a residential landline. So that says to us that people A, don’t have them or B, just don’t use them because they’re using their cell phones anyway. And so that’s why, you know, Next Gen is so important in terms of the location packet that we’ll receive and under being able to have the calls routed correctly is just, you know, because they always say seconds save lives. And so we know that, you know, between our cell phones and our VoIP, Voice over IP lines, almost 95% of our call volume is coming in that way. And so. But we do run lots of stats. I know um and we do also run our call volume and base our schedules, we do quarterly schedules shift changes so that we can um, you know, reorganize how we have our staffing. So in the winter, we would have more people in the mornings because we have more crashes and things like that because of bad weather. Where in the summer, maybe we don’t have as many on in the morning as we would in the winter, but we have them on later and more of them at night. So we definitely we constantly run reports and stats and try and manage our call load and our staffing levels to accommodate what we believe our call load will be based on historical numbers.
Matt Peters: Wow. That’s pretty amazing. I I you know I it just never occurred to me, but yes, crashes in the morning in the winter uh and more things going on at night in the summer. Yeah just yep. Yep. I’m losing my mind. So when you dispatch uh to an emergency, how does that work?
Tina Mathieu: Um on say a fire or a medical call, the fire chiefs so we dispatch for 26 agencies, all of Weber County and all of Morgan County. Um state, federal, uh local and county agencies. So our fire departments, um it’s great because their boundaries are very grey. So when we dispatch um a fire or a medical, the fire chiefs have um determined what type of equipment will go or apparatus will go on a specific call type. Like say a house fire. So we have a structure fire and let’s just um for kicks say that they want two engines, an ambulance, and a battalion chief, and a ladder truck to go on that. So when we get the call, the dispatcher will add the call into the Computer Aided Dispatch system. And then we’ve got it programmed so the dispatcher will dispatch the call and it automatically goes and grabs the closest unit to that call and the types of units that they need. And so in our 911 center because we’re truly consolidated with, you know, within those two counties, um we don’t have any delays because we’re not having to, you know, if it’s a if it’s a fire in Ogden, but it’s on the south end of Ogden, well maybe the station from South Ogden is a little bit closer than some of the other stations in Ogden. So we’ll send some Ogden units and we’ll send some South Ogden units or some Weber Fire units. And so they have mutual aid going on all day every day in our from our location and we never have a delay because we have them all in the system. We know that they’re available or if they’re busy then the system will go to the next closest units. And so we have it all pre-built into the to the Computer Aided Dispatch system so the dispatcher really just has to do the commands into the CAD and tell it to dispatch it. And then sends that out and then it it we have a station alerting system that automatically starts alerting all the stations, tells which units are going on, electronically tells them what channel, you know, fire channel to respond to and what they’re responding on and the address. And then they get going en route. And then and then once they go en route on the radio then the what we call the tender will give all the details. You know that there’s a house, if there’s people inside, if if it’s empty, if there’s flame showing or whatever. So that’s kind of it in a nutshell. That’s how it works really for all of the disciplines. Same with same with medical. And then police is a little less complicated um in terms of, you know, it’s just remembering how many units will go. So if it’s say a domestic violence call, then we would definitely send two units. But if it is uh to report, you know, your golf clubs got stolen, we’ll just send one unit. So it’s about maintaining officer safety and determining, you know, the type of call, what’s involved, and if they’re going to need two, you know, one or two people. So.
Greg Bunce: Now is the is the GIS is the GIS data play a role in that as well I would guess? So like to know, you know, what police agency or what fire you mentioned there was numerous different um entities that you guys are kind of available to dispatch from. But how would you know which one? Again is that GIS based?
Tina Mathieu: Yeah, definitely. Um again the data you guys maintain for us is the back end of our CAD system. And so when the address gets put in, it will determine the the city which, you know, in this case of the this fire, if it’s Ogden City, it will say okay it’s Ogden City and it’s Ogden Fire Zone or Station 1’s area. And so then it will go and look for the primary unit from Station 1. Maybe that’s their engine. And we don’t want to drain, you know, the whole city so we’ll say okay it’s going to be Battalion 1 and Engine 1 and then we’ll send maybe Ladder 1 and then Engine 81 because they’re close and maybe Ambulance 5 because they’re, you know, they’re kind of southeast-ish. And so that it is all everything is done based on mapping and GIS on the back end. I mean GIS to us is is everything because it it helps us so that we can get out get our calls entered and get people whether it’s police, fire, or medical on their way within our goal is within 60 seconds so that they can get out and make a difference. You know maybe save a life or or stop a crime or whatever. But we we would be in deep trouble. And we’ve had had times where, you know, the CAD system has been down whether for upgrade or maintenance or something like that and we have the books that they have with maps to show whose area it is in. And it it can get complicated. Very very complicated. So yeah I I will say that I’m grateful to work in a time where we have the GIS back end that we do to simplify our jobs of as much as we can.
Greg Bunce: Yeah, I would I would say, you know, from based on what you’re saying um, you know, we you definitely you guys work with us and grab the GIS data. I would say just based on everything I’m hearing, I’m very glad that you guys are in charge of this aspect. Um as the GIS side I think sometimes it can get a little challenging and frustrating to maintain the data, but now listening to you I’m I’m definitely, you know, glad that you guys are on that end of the end of the thing cause there’s a lot of stuff going on over there. You know we’re So so that kind of brings us into the wrap up here. We, you know, so UGRC, we we basically are the state geographic information office and we provide a lot of data to a lot of folks. Um 911 being one of them. Um in Utah the some of the funding comes from, you know, basically if if you have a telephone or a a cell phone you’re going to see a service charge on there. I think it’s about 70 something cents. Some of it’s going to come to UGRC. One penny of that is going to come to UGRC. Um a bunch is going to go to the PSAPs based on call volume. Um and then some is going to go to the Utah Communications Authority which is another state entity. So UGRC and the UCA are two state state agencies that kind of work together to facilitate 911 in the state. But then you guys at the PSAP level are really implementing a lot of this stuff. Um from your angle, you know, what is what does that relationship look like? What is your relationship with with the UCA? Um you kind of discussed what your relationship was with us. The UCA and and how does all how do all those pieces in Utah kind of fit together to make this whole thing just happen?
Tina Mathieu: Yeah. Um we have a really unique situation. You know I go to conferences around the country and talk to other people in other states and how their 911 system is set up and Utah is unique in a lot of ways. Um in that we have like the central hub and that we are all connected in terms of um we do a lot of things the same way. We have for a lot of years but a couple years ago um we went to the legislature and and asked them to give us money for a statewide 911 phone system and to put the 911 committee that had been around for quite a long time um under UCA because we knew that going to Next Gen that we would need the ESInet. Um but we also knew that some of the radio, the statewide radio system that UCA was getting ready to embark on, um there would be some crossover. And so we felt like there would be a lot of cost savings in for the citizens in what we would do to have 911 housed with the Public Safety Radio System because we need we have to have both to do our entire job. And so it’s been really a positive thing for the public safety agencies and definitely in terms of cost saving for the state. But there’s a dollar 49 um fee on the phone bill like you mentioned. And 71 cents of that goes directly to the 911 PSAPs. For my center and for most centers that covers between um that 71 cents is about 23 to 26% of our total budget. So the rest of our um money comes from the citizens one way or another whether, you know, for me I have a um because I’m a Special Service District there I have a line item on um my citizens property taxes. So that’s where I get the other part of my funding. Um others, you know, depending on how they’re structured, you know, get it through their local municipalities and things like that. But for UCA they get um that 911 fee also pays for their services. It pays 20 25 cents of it goes for the statewide 911 phone system. And then um 18 cents pays for the um O&M for UCA. And right now 34 cents is covering the state 911 uh radio system that’s being installed and we’re getting ready to convert over to in a year or a year and a half or so. Um but that fee actually we went back last session and got it reduced. So in July of 2025 that fee will actually reduce by about 20 something cents. So that’s good news too. But UCA’s been um been a fantastic hub for 911 if you will just because they went out and did the RFP for the state 911 phone system. Um and that allows for us to have centralized servers so we don’t all have to have, you know, 30 911 centers don’t have to have back room equipment. We can have centralized um servers and then utilize the system as if it’s one giant system. We get Weber gets all of our calls, you know, all the Weber Morgan calls. But if we needed to route calls or needed to send my employees down to Salt Lake because there was a problem with my building, my employees could go log in there and answer calls from there. The Weber calls would start to route to them as soon as they logged in as as a Weber employee. So UCA is really our hub and it’s worked out really good. The funding is again all comes from the 911 fee um as allowed by federal law. And it’s been it’s been great. It keeps us all on the same page. It helps the state have um similar 911 uh levels or um, you know, service levels throughout the entire state. So I think that we do a lot of things really good here in the state in terms of being on the same page and making sure that we you know from the biggest to the smallest center in the state we’re we’re working together.
Greg Bunce: It’s it’s great to just dive into your bubble for a second um because we get we you know we have our own bubble of of how this whole thing works but just to jump in and and hear your angle. Um and that’s kind of what this podcast is about is is kind of, you know, Matt and I wanted to just kind of reach out and say, you know, this is our role but how do we affect your role and how do how do we play together? So so this has been really informative for me. Um I I really appreciate you taking the time to to go over some of this stuff and and I definitely have learned a bunch here. So I want to thank you for that. And Matt, I don’t know if you have anything to add.
Matt Peters: Yeah, just just thanks a bunch. I think that a lot of people don’t appreciate that a person of your position, Tina, all the knowledge that they have and all they’ve gleaned over the years and how it really helps to run the system.
Tina Mathieu: Yeah well thanks you guys. I appreciate you having me. We really very much appreciate you know everything that UGRC does for our 911 center and our state, you know, working on that statewide project. You guys are such a a huge partner for us and we definitely couldn’t do it without you guys. So we appreciate it.
Matt Peters: Thanks, appreciate it.
Greg Bunce: Yeah. Okay, well thank you very much.
Tina Mathieu: Thank you. Have a good one.
Greg Bunce: Okay you too.
Tina Mathieu: Okay, bye.
Greg Bunce: Bye.
Matt Peters: Well, thanks for tuning into the show today. I hope it was informative. Um and as always if you have any questions or if you have any ideas for future shows, please reach out to Matt and I. Currently we’re in the works of uh coming up with the next episode. So stay tuned. Thanks again for listening. And have a safe and enjoyable holiday season.